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Who'll drive?

HELP WANTED: Capable and steady driver with clear vision to navigate a bumpy road to survival. Road map of a sorts already provided.

Sandusky Register Staff

May 24, 2010

HELP WANTED: Capable and steady driver with clear vision to navigate a bumpy road to survival. Road map of a sorts already provided.

We have the map, if you can call the recently released report from AngelouEconomics, commissioned by the Greater Erie Marketing Group a map.

Manufacturing would be nice, but because that's likely unrealistic, let's chase tech, retail and medical services.

Develop the downtown to draw bright young people to live there -- and even better, to encourage our own bright young people it's worth their time to stick around.

Do something about the territoriality that hinders so many chances at cooperation.

Some, with ample justification, note the report's observations aren't anything that hasn't been discussed everywhere else in Erie County, from any number of shop floors to this editorial page. But some people won't listen to anything that isn't presented in an expensive, PowerPointed and bound report from a high-priced consultant, so if that's the value of the Angelou-GEM report, so be it.

So we have a map to which some of the movers and shakers and purse-string holders might pay attention.

Who will take us down the road laid out in the report? Who will be the person who can see where this is going,where it has to go, communicate that vision to us and convince us of our need to follow that road?

Will the leader be found within GEM? Within the county government? Within one of the municipal or township governments -- in which case that person would have the double task of convincing everyone in the region the road map benefits the entire region, not just the municipality from which that leader comes?

We have the map. As we've noted before, we have the means to move down that road. We need a driver.